Setting (Janurary-March 2007; final year of undergraduate degree)
My personal tutor, from the social sciences during my undergraduate degree, told me of his own personal difficulties; living with a serious physical impairment, the obligations of being a father, and husband, running a charity; teaching; publishing/research. Sometimes his family blames themselves for not being able to support him to be an academic...he was a good man. I was very sick. He always made me feel welcome, he always wanted to make me smile, he was a good old working class boy, hard working, full of integrity, dignity, and virtue. He sympathised with me...but I never had the chance to prove myself to him...never had the chance to show him what ferocity my mind had within it, because it was dulled by depression.
"If I didn't have these commitments; I would be able to plunge into my work and probably do a lot of good research and publications. But I wouldn't be much of a man without my family, my with, and my friends that I love" He said. I replied, feeling very tired, low, weak. "I wonder how much a better person I could have been if I weren't ill...", my voice, faint, weak, trembling. "[Conatus], he said, don't think that way, this is the only reality we have; we could always imagine what things could have been like if disasters didn't happen, if I didn't get injured, or if I got my PhD earlier. But the fact is, we are in this situation now and we have to face what is real, not what could have been."
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